UC SCHOOL OF ART MFA GRADUATING SHOW 2015 — TEXTS AND PROJECTS
This collection of texts and images brings together the work of graduate students and faculty in art history, art education, and fine arts at the University of Cincinnati in the spring of 2015. We invited students in art education and art history to write accompanying texts for the final projects of their peers in the fine arts graduate program – projects encompassing everything from multimedia installation, abstract painting, video animation, fiber-based sculptural assemblages, photography, and drawing. The students’ projects were presented at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, as part of the School of Art’s MFA Thesis Exhibition, which ran from April 1 and April 25, 2015. A process of looking, talking, looking again, writing, reading, and re-writing unfolded. Shorter versions of the texts were shown at the CAC alongside the artworks at the CAC. The process created a working space for artists and writers in dialogue, giving rise to new ideas and projects in turn.
Morgan Thomas
Vittoria Daiello
[from Foreword]
Design: Sso-Rha Kang

This research explores race related issues within Sherman Alexie's novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian to generalize how race and racism is portrayed between different races within America, in this case Native Americans and white Americans. From there, the research presents the need to present these racial aspects through high school classroom instructions in order to raise awareness of race in secondary education. This research was presented at University of Cincinnati's 2018 Scholarly Showcase and was awarded in Top 25 poster presentation at the showcase.

Human iPSCs (TkDA cell-line) were differentiated on laminin coated plates into endoderm by treatment of Activin and BMP, then treated with FGF4 and CHIR to further differentiate into posterior foregut. The cells were embedded into Matrigel droplets and cultured in Advanced DMEM. Droplet media was collected for ELISA to measure Albumin concentrations. The droplets were collected for histology and RNA isolation to test for AFP, ALB, and HBG1 genes. These methods resulted in the creation of a novel culture system containing both hepatic and hematopoietic lineage cells to model developing fetal liver.